I prefer a defined character. It helps the story in a lot of ways imo.
That character customization looks legit though. They even have classes too so hopefully Monolift Soft was able to find some type of balance between the two for this game.

Yup, it's not nearly as beautiful as it was before, definitely downgraded.

They look the same to me to be honest. I think you're just judging based on the character models. This is is due 2015, so hopefully monolith will be able to "upgrade" them before the launch! The rest of the game is still gorgeous.

Honestly Monolith please do upgrade them. Not being a graphics nut, but how can a game looks like this,

At the start of the game, two warring alien species have a fierce battle close to Earth, and essentially force all of humanity to leave the planet in two arc ships before the planet blows up. The arc ships are extremely large in size and can essentially hold the population of an entire city.

One of the arc ships gets knocked out of space and crash-lands on an alien planet. Xenoblade Chronicles X takes place on this planet, and part of the game’s story involves searching for other groups of survivors that were scattered during the crash.

Your player character then awakens from their stasis pod, at which point you can customize them. You can choose their gender, hairstyle, skin colour, size and more. The first person you meet is Elma, who is one of the scouts from the city looking for survivors.

The first people to come out of stasis after the arc ship crashed were military people. However, the military folks know that they need people with other talents to get civilization back up and running, such as farmers and craftspeople.

As you explore the first area in the game, you’ll come across other artefacts that were scattered during the arc ship’s crash-landing.

The first city in the game is Neo Los Angeles, guarded by a military installation. This is the city you’ve seen in all the trailers for Xenoblade Chronicles X thus far. You’ll also see your first mechs in Neo Los Angeles.

Day-and-night cycles are back, along with changing weather patterns. Enemy patterns will change from day to night and will also change with the weather. For example, predators come out to hunt at night.

Like Xenoblade before it, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s battle system is entirely real-time. “Technical Points” are used to power up your Arts. TP can be built up faster by using melee attacks. Ranged attacks are less risky than melee attacks, but build up TP slower.

You can give orders to your teammates in battle using the battle menu. One of the options is the ability to have them focus fire on your target.

Characters have “Inner Stats” and “Class Stats”. The former are tied to your character and your items. The latter are tied to your character class.

Character classes can be changed on-the-fly—even in the midst of battle. Different Arts are tied to different classes. The first class you start out with is Drifter. Once you unlock multiple classes, you can mix and match Arts from different classes for a character setup you like.

My take:
They seem to be taking some cues from the Tales series (TP regenerating from melee hits, changing team strategies on the fly), which is interesting considering Zestiria is clearly taking cues from Xenoblade. and neither of those are bad things. Both series do different things very well, and manage to deliver unique takes on the JRPG formula

I prefer a defined character. It helps the story in a lot of ways imo.
That character customization looks legit though. They even have classes too so hopefully Monolift Soft was able to find some type of balance between the two for this game.

I agree, but Xenoblade had lackluster characters anyway, so I don't mind to much for this game.

Currently Playing: Super Mario Odyssey, ARMS, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Steamworld Dig 2, A Hat In Time, (maybe some Wii games over Thanksgiving w/ the fam)

At the start of the game, two warring alien species have a fierce battle close to Earth, and essentially force all of humanity to leave the planet in two arc ships before the planet blows up. The arc ships are extremely large in size and can essentially hold the population of an entire city.

One of the arc ships gets knocked out of space and crash-lands on an alien planet. Xenoblade Chronicles X takes place on this planet, and part of the game’s story involves searching for other groups of survivors that were scattered during the crash.

Your player character then awakens from their stasis pod, at which point you can customize them. You can choose their gender, hairstyle, skin colour, size and more. The first person you meet is Elma, who is one of the scouts from the city looking for survivors.

The first people to come out of stasis after the arc ship crashed were military people. However, the military folks know that they need people with other talents to get civilization back up and running, such as farmers and craftspeople.

As you explore the first area in the game, you’ll come across other artefacts that were scattered during the arc ship’s crash-landing.

The first city in the game is Neo Los Angeles, guarded by a military installation. This is the city you’ve seen in all the trailers for Xenoblade Chronicles X thus far. You’ll also see your first mechs in Neo Los Angeles.

Day-and-night cycles are back, along with changing weather patterns. Enemy patterns will change from day to night and will also change with the weather. For example, predators come out to hunt at night.

Like Xenoblade before it, Xenoblade Chronicles X’s battle system is entirely real-time. “Technical Points” are used to power up your Arts. TP can be built up faster by using melee attacks. Ranged attacks are less risky than melee attacks, but build up TP slower.

You can give orders to your teammates in battle using the battle menu. One of the options is the ability to have them focus fire on your target.

Characters have “Inner Stats” and “Class Stats”. The former are tied to your character and your items. The latter are tied to your character class.

Character classes can be changed on-the-fly—even in the midst of battle. Different Arts are tied to different classes. The first class you start out with is Drifter. Once you unlock multiple classes, you can mix and match Arts from different classes for a character setup you like.

My take:
They seem to be taking some cues from the Tales series (TP regenerating from melee hits, changing team strategies on the fly), which is interesting considering Zestiria is clearly taking cues from Xenoblade. and neither of those are bad things. Both series do different things very well, and manage to deliver unique takes on the JRPG formula